Since I started at j. three weeks ago, I’ve spent some time thinking about how it is, exactly, that I’m Jewish. Technically, yes, I’m Jewish because my parents are: When I was growing up, we celebrated the major holidays, and went to synagogue maybe twice a year. I was born in San Francisco and grew up mostly in Albany, where I was always one of five or six Jewish kids in my class. I attended and later worked at Jewish summer camps.
Yet, like so many cultural Jews, my earliest memories of identifying with Judaism revolve around food.
Before I understood who the Maccabees on our menorah were, I understood the smell of latkes frying in the kitchen, music playing in the dining room, and a fire in the fireplace. I understood that it was my job to put out the applesauce and sour cream.
Passover meant having family friends over, chopping apples for charoset, and then telling a story — punctuated by dipping our fingers in Manischewitz and shouting about frogs — before eating as much sweet noodle kugel as I could get away with. An art project from first grade lists my favorite food as matzah brei.
Later, my concept of Jewish culture expanded to include Woody Allen, Andy Kaufman and Gilda Radner — so being Jewish also meant being funny. In my high school years, I joined Jewish Youth for Community Action, and soon found myself visiting homeless shelters, talking about LGBT issues, then protesting state Proposition 21, aimed at sending more youth to adult prisons. Being Jewish, I decided, could have a lot to do with social justice.
My first year of college, I attended one Hillel Shabbat service with my roommate, at her urging, then never went again — while she gradually got more involved and then joined a Jewish sorority. At first it was a social thing for her, she told me, but then it became a really formative part of her Jewish identity.
I’ve been thinking about these definitions, and how they change, as I attempt to learn the ABCs of Jewish organizations and congregations in the Bay Area.
I’ve become instantly and acutely aware of just how much I don’t know about Judaism — about how vast that word can be. I didn’t have a bat mitzvah; organized religion hasn’t been a part of my experience. I understand just enough of the political spectrum of Jews locally to be worried about offending almost everyone.
One thing I do know: I believe in Judaism as a malleable thing, something each person gets to define for him or herself, by taking what works for them and leaving the rest.
I’m thinking here of the two-haggadah method.
Each Passover my family has used two sets of haggadahs. One is a fairly traditional version from the ’50s, with great watercolor illustrations (the “evil son” is depicted with a cigar and a racetrack card) and some parts we don’t love (especially when we have non-Jews at the table) — lines that are essentially about Jews being better than everyone. The other is a ’90s version featuring quotes from anarchist Emma Goldman, photos of diverse groups of children, and suggestions for incorporating environmentalism into the seder; a hippie haggadah through and through.
We switch back and forth as we read, and by the end, the mish-mash of tone and content pretty accurately reflects our take on Passover. It’s never planned, but it always works. It’s the baby-boomer-New-Yorkers-raising-Berkeley-kids Passover. The hybrid model.
As of this minute, I have a lot of learning to do. Being a writer here means that I essentially get to waltz into different micro-communities each week and demand to have everything explained to me, which in my book is a pretty cool gig. I fully expect my sense of identity to change as I learn here and, with the mish-mash-hybrid model in mind, I’m looking forward to that.
So while I still feel as if there’s as much Jewishness in the wistful way my parents talk about East Coast delicatessens as there is in Rosh Hashanah prayers, I’m ready to hear what it’s all about for the rest of you.
Emma Silvers lives in San Francisco. She can be reached at [email protected].